GOD’S LIKENESS by Stephen N. Haskell

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Apr 2, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 14.

GOD’S LIKENESS.

By Stephen N. Haskell

BY S. N. H.

“AND God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” But man lost the image of God by sin, and became fallen in nature, so that his likeness was changed or perverted by sin. And of Seth we read, “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.” Thus from that time on mankind have been born sinners, and we have all partaken of the fallen nature that Adam and Eve entailed upon the human race. But immediately upon the fall of man, a promise was revealed to him that God would put enmity between the serpent and the woman, between his seed and her seed; and there has been war from that time to the present. Christ was to bruise the serpent’s head, while the serpent would bruise his heel. Christ therefore becomes man’s restorer to that which he lost by sin. He becomes man’s Redeemer, the great Healer of the race. He did not come to this world and take upon himself Adam’s condition, but he stepped down lower, to meet man as he is, weakened by sin, polluted in his own iniquity.

Now we are asked to “put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.” Christ bears the fullest resemblance to the Father, so much so that any person who beholds Christ’s character beholds the character of God. “For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” Those therefore that receive Christ receive the image of God. The mind becomes transformed. The inclinations of the new man, created in Christ Jesus, become by this recreation the inclinations of Adam when purity reigned in his breast. His interests become identical with those of Adam when he came fresh from the hands of his Creator, before sin had entered into the world.

The possibilities of the mind of man when it bears the image of the Creator, unblinded by the god of this world, God alone can measure. Most certainly all the intelligence of Adam is before us as an object lesson, and so is the wisdom of Solomon. What God has done for humanity, God can do again, and he can do more. This is only what God will do where there is full consecration to him. The Christian religion is not simply a passive trust, but an active principle of love. It is impossible for it to live without activity. And when every power of the mind and body is wholly occupied with the motives that actuated Christ in coming to this earth, it brings into the heart and soul, the power, the glory, and the possessions of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is Christ himself that comes into the heart with all his graces. God is not worshiped in the abstract, but when we come near to him, and partake of his nature as he partook of ours, then Christ reigns in and through us to the glory of God.

Heavenly intelligences are waiting to coöperate with human agencies in accomplishing the purposes of God on the earth. Shall we not, then, yield to God all our hearts? Shall we not let the mind of Christ dwell within us, let the word of God dwell within us richly? And so with the power of God, let it work, and grow in the heart as the seed grows in the earth. May the Lord help his people to bear the image of the Divine as it was first planted in Adam when created. “And put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.” This embraces every principle of knowledge that was in Christ.